Too cool for school: Safety impressed kids
COLLEGE STATION — At 6-2 and a svelte 200 pounds, Keldrick Carper didn’t look like the usual fourth grader, which is why he caught my eye in a hallway as I hurriedly dropped off a forgotten lunch at a Bryan elementary school last year.
The tight Texas A&M footballissued shirt was a dead giveaway as well. That night, I asked my two oldest children about Carper’s reading to their classes as part of an A&M volunteer program.
“He was really cool,” the actual fourth grader said, bestowing a kid’s highest honor on the benevolent Aggies safety.
A few months later, I caught up with Carper on his generous undertaking, which he had figured was in relative anonymity — at least outside of appreciative students and their teachers.
“I’ve had a really great experience doing ‘Aggies Read.’ I’ve gone to a number of elementary schools here,” an unsuspecting Carper said. “It’s great seeing how young children are drawn to you, as if you’re their hero, and how much impact you can have on their lives.
“It’s just given me more perspective on who I am as a person and how I can affect others in everything I do.”
I let him know two of my kids had been in his audience at one of the schools and had even bestowed the “really cool” tag on him afterward. Caught off guard, Carper burst into a grin and joked that he had paid them a couple of bucks to claim as much.
A&M coach Jimbo Fisher knows better and, for the record, also counts Carper in the “really cool” category as a dynamic senior leader entering a promising season for the Aggies. Coaches aren’t always thrilled with players from a previous regime they did not recruit, but Fisher is delighted with Carper, the pride of Plain Dealing, La.
“He comes to practice every day with a smile. He works hard and is smart,” said Fisher, entering his third season at A&M. “He’s a great kid — a great kid. You know what you’re getting every day with him.”
The engaging Carper is comfortable behind a microphone, too. After all he talked into one as salutatorian of Plain Dealing High three years ago. He also stayed strong and resolute in
August 2018 as one of the A&M African American targets of a verbal racist attack by a former teammate, linebacker Santino Marchiol, discovered on a Hudl video.
At the time, a disgruntled Marchiol already had transferred to Arizona to play for Kevin Sumlin, who had recruited him to A&M prior to Sumlin’s firing in November 2017. Sumlin quickly dismissed Marchiol at Arizona following the discovery of the vicious remarks on the video.
Carper, declining to publicly recognize his former teammate’s ugliness, simply tweeted a Bible verse (Psalms 118:6): “The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?”
Last week, Carper backed fellow senior Kellen Mond, the Aggies’ starting quarterback who has demanded the removal of an on-campus statue of Sul Ross, a confederate general in the Civil War and later one of A&M’s first presidents, credited with saving the university from closing.
“We stand by this statement 100 percent. That’s our QB!” Carper posted to Twitter in all caps.
Fisher would expect no less loyalty from a player who is a clear team leader despite not being a full-time starter. Carper, a former four-star recruit, started four of the 8-5 Aggies’ 13 games last season but still finished fifth in tackles with 51.
In putting together his best of three seasons at A&M, Carper collected a combined 10 tackles in the Aggies’ final two games against LSU and Oklahoma State, the latter in the Texas Bowl, and at the team’s annual banquet last winter earned the Aggies’ defensive leadership, junior academic excellence and top-conditioned athlete awards.
Carper was born and raised in Plain Dealing, about 15 miles from Springhill, La., home of A&M’s 1957 Heisman Trophy winner John David Crow. I kidded with Carper that it was OK if he didn’t know much about Crow, considering the Aggie legend’s on-field exploits were a little before his time.
“More so my grandfather’s time,” Carper responded with a laugh. “But I do remember hearing about (Crow) all the time. Growing up, they would talk about all the great athletes, and he was definitely one of them in that northwestern part of Louisiana.”
Perhaps Carper, who graduated from A&M in May a mere three years after leaving Plain Dealing, will be recalled as a catalyst to the Aggies’ first SEC crown this winter. Maybe he won’t, and right now it’s even in question if a season will be played because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I know at least one way Carper will be remembered in BryanCollege Station, however, long after his last tackle: by adoring children who one day will blossom into young adults, forever grateful a hard-hitting A&M safety once took time to gently settle in before them and read — a really cool and kind thing to do.